Parker Kitterman is Director of Music and Organist at Historic Christ Church, Philadelphia where he leads an active music program of weekly choral services, monthly Evensongs, and organ recital series, among other duties. In 2018 he oversaw the installation and dedication of C.B. Fisk’s Op. 150, the Esther Wideman Memorial Organ, a landmark instrument which has garnered tremendous praise from touring organists and audiences alike. Parker has himself performed widely across North America, Europe and Japan, and with a range of artists including the International Contemporary Ensemble, the Chamber Orchestra of Philadelphia, Piffaro Renaissance Band, and Singing City Choir. He is a graduate of Duke University, the Yale School of Music, and the Brussels Royal Conservatory, where he studied on a Fulbright Fellowship.

 Parker is an active composer whose liturgical music, including the as-of-yet unpublished Old City Psalter, can be heard on a weekly basis at Christ Church. Other notable works including “The Singing Bowl” (winner of the 2021 King’s Singers New Music Prize);“Two Songs for Gathering and Parting” (The Singing City Songbook, 2022); “Passacaglia for Flute and Organ” (Fantasmagoria, ed. Anna Meyer 2019); and Requiem for the Charleston Nine, described as  “producing a seamless fabric in which plainchant, modern classical, and jazz styles not merely co-exist but come together to proffer a whole greater than the sum of their individual parts” (The Chestnut Hill Local).

 Parker is passionate about building community through music, whether that be volunteering as accompanist for his local public school’s productions, coaching youth and adult musicians toward performance readiness, leading congregational/community sing-alongs, or writing fresh, accessible arrangements for amateur choirs and bell-ringers. A native of rural Georgia, he lives in the Queen Village neighborhood of Philadelphia with a family of four, plus a cat and a rescue dog who feels like a third child. When the music brain is off, he enjoys playing tennis and NYTimes puzzles.